Q about walking over agricultural land.

[Slubber]

I am bristling with rage here, possibly unreasonably but would quite like to have a sensible discussion with fellow dog owners and not burst into flames of fury.

Have just done the dog walk, one that I do twice a day. A good percentage of it is over agricultural land that is currently planted with wheat.

Dog is off the lead and pretty much the whole time is on the footpath with me or rootling about in hedgerows, sometimes she will stray onto the field, and then I will recall her back to the path. Initially I was concerned about her damaging the crops but on several occasions now I have stopped and looked what her paws are doing and yes they are sometimes treading on the crops but by no means are they being destroyed. I'm a reasonable person so if I'm told on here that by going on the field she is really destroying the crops then so be it, I will have to walk elsewhere.

Today I am walking with a friend and her cocker. Cocker flushes out a pheasant from the hedgerows and both dogs start to chase it. My dog recalls straight away to the whistle (thank God), my mate has forgotten her whistle so she asks me to whistle for hers and her dog comes back. Yes they were running on the field, pheasant has flown off.

Next thing we know we have an angry woman in our face, lecturing us about the growing crops and keeping our dogs off them (they were off them until pheasant incident) and then she says that the pheasant is her hand reared pet and if she see my dog chasing it again then she will shoot it.

mmm here I lost the plot a bit and called her a cow, thus losing any higher ground I might have had.

Then there is a full blown row with much shouting.

Not great really, I hate losing my temper.

God this is long sorry,

Anyway apart from that I SHOULN'T have called her a cow, does my dog need to be on the lead at all times if we are walking over agricultural land? As this is what this woman insisted that it should be.

Your dog doesn't need to be on al ead but it does need to stay on the path. If you can't ensure that it does stay on the path 100% of the time then I think its reasonable to say it should be on a lead. The field itself is private land and the owner obviously has a problem with the dog coming onto the field. I take your point that the dog isn't causing damage but to be honest it doesn't matter - her field, her rules.

The pheasant could well be one thats been bred for shoots and she won't want them being scared off. Seems very unreasonable to treaten to shoot a dog over a pheasant but I believe that farmers are allowed to shoot dogs that are chasing their livestock. Whether she can legally argue that the pheasant is livestock I'm not sure but I wouldn't take the risk.

They should be on a lead. Its agricultural land, not common land or open access land, you (and dog) have a right to be ON footpaths but not off them.
And yes, with the ground as wet as it is round here, walking ( even a dog) on planted soil will compact it, may cause puddling and make it harder for crop to grow through. Less crop = less income .

Hand reared pet pheasant tho .... she was having a laugh. most are to some extent a looked after bird, but hardly a pet if it was roaming free . If it was sheep they had chased tho, the comment about shooting your dog would be quite correct.

pheasant not livestock

keep it on a lead it isn't your land and bloody annoying to have someone's dog charging around in your crops. especially if that person, on your land, calls you a cow.

If you are going to walk on someone else's land, be courteous about it

Ok, have taken on board keeping dog off the field 100% of the time, fair enough.

Freshmint my dog wasn't charging around in her fields. She was on the path bordering the hedgerow and ran after pheasant onto field for the time it took me to put the whistle in my mouth and call her back. Probably 10 seconds if that. This is trespass, yes, i've just looked it up, but I don't think it warrants the threat of shooting my dog.

UniS if we are walking anywhere near livestock she is always on the lead.

she ran onto the field
she is a dog
she was charging around the field

obviously she can't shoot your dog but equally obviously she is right to be annoyed if she wants to. her land, her crops, your bad

why couldn't you just have said "I'm terribly sorry" and moved on?

very annoying to have people using your land, not controlling dogs on it, raising pheasants and then being rude when you ask them to stop

surely you can see that?

No, if she had been simply cross then I may well have said I'm sorry and simply moved on.

I don't take particularly kindly to people marching up to me, sticking their fingers in my face, shouting, and then threatening to kill my dog using a firearm, particularly when my dog was no more than 20metres away from me and I frequently do this walk with my children.

People threatening to use guns against my dog in close proximity to me or potentially my children is unlikely to make me meekly apologise and move on.

Yes my dog was on the field, she ran out stopped to the whistle and immediately came back. As you say she shouldn't have been there but she is a well controlled dog as the instant recall is testament to.

She has every right to be annoyed but I only became angry when the threat to use a gun was shouted in my face. I reserve the right to become impolite in the face of this sort of provocative behaviour.

pretty sure that deer etc that roam over the fields do more damage!

i feel yr annoyance, we had the same thing recently. its how they go about it thats the problem! If they spoke to you reasonably then thats fine, but to come over all guns blazing (not literally all the time) is not on

IMO dog 20m away is not under close control, which in Scotland is how dogs should be on farmland. Different acess to land up here, with a presumed right to roam. Think of the damage to crops and the lost birds if it's not just your dog, but happening on a regular basis.

It's private land. Many people less considerate than you probably walk there, and it is maddening for farmers to have to deal with people valuing rights before responsibilities. This was just a minor incident that got out of hand.

You do need to keep your dog on a lead if it won't keep to the path, I'm afraid. Check out the Countryside Code, it's common sense.

Ok, well I will say it again but I have fully taken on board that my dog needs to be off the field 100% of the time, as I said in the OP the vast majority of the time she is on the path next to me and only occasionally strays from the 1m track onto the mud next to it and is called back when this happens. I appreciate that she is not entitled to walk off the path so I will either have to keep her on the lead or work further at close heel-off lead walking.

Labradorlover she was 20m away at the point she stopped and turned to the whistle. Yes I suppose she was technically out of control up to that point but that is the distance she had gone between me starting to see her run and her hearing the whistle. She is normally walking within about 5m of me.

I might add that this is the first pheasant we have EVER encountered on this stretch of track we walk on twice a day. If there had been wildlife protection signs up she would have been on lead. If she was frequently flushing pheasant then I would have trained her up on leave it (as she does already to squirrels, joggers and bikes)

I didn't think a dog was considered out of control by the distance that it is separated by its owner. I thought it was defined by a dog not responding to commands that would make it desist from, um well antisocial behaviour. I'm sure there is some technical jargon to define when a dog is out of control.

Thank you BeerTricks . I really did give a 'thank you God' moment when she turned and came back but I'm going to redouble the recall training now she has had even a small opportunity to be in prey-chase mode.

Labradorlover (I take it you have a lab) what about stop training? This is something that I am working on at the moment. I will send the dog away from me and then whistle command for her to drop into the down position. We are slowly upping the distance she is away from me before I give the command, we are probably up to about 30m atm, is she out of control when we are working on this? (genuine question)

Regardless of what the law strictly implies, I would have thought that the level of control you had over your dog makes her reaction clearly way way over the top.

Also (again regardless of what the law says), a free-roaming pet pheasant is a little bit stretching the boundaries of the duty of care that dog owners have, I'd think. If it was my pheasant I would be blaming myself a bit for the near miss.

And I thanked god the other day that I just happened to have my terrier on a lead when we turned a corner to find a couple exercising their precious pet ferrets.

I can't imagine you calling anyone a cow slubber.

Well she might have been (understandably) pissed off about her crops being trampled but blimey, talk about an overreaction! I have to admit if she'd threatened my dog with death by shotgun I'd have struggled to keep my temper, too.

my mother thinks I should be calling the police (I think she is freaking out that this woman is going to have her shot gun trained on me and the dog for every moment we are walking along the footpath).

Not one of my finer moments of self control I must say. Can't remember the last time I was so rude to someone.

Dog walking is the ONLY area of my life that leaves me open to conflict -- its is because we can't get our pets to adopt quite the same extreme appeasement/avoidance personae that we subject ourselves to.

A year or so ago I called a man a bastard for brandishing his chain dog lead at me and my dog.

(He was a bastard though.)

and I can't imagine you calling anyone a bastard Eleison (I'm sure he was a bastard though)

If the land was fully arable then the wheat would just be establishing and vulnerable (I assume you are in England as it is too early for wheat up here).

If it was a mixed arable farm then they may have started lambing in which case your dog should have been kept on a lead.

I do not believe that it was a pet pheasant but it would have been hand fed for shooting.If it was a pet, what was it doing in the middle of bushes in a field?

I'm sorry that you feel upset, Slubber as the gun threat was well out of order (although she would be within her rights to shoot your dog if it was worrying sheep or livestock).

I would avoid her land in future.

OMG BeerTricks , that is some serious restraint that you only took a photo and gave anger management advice

It is fully arable GentleOtter. She is on lead at all times if we are anywhere near livestock.

I really don't get the pet pheasant thing at all, which is why I am a little scared at the whole threat to kill thing.

I will absolutely not be going near her land for a long long time which is a shame as it is part of our daily circuit walk.

wow, you've trained your dog to leave a squirrel
it seems you realise you lost control but i think i probably would too if someone was threatening my dog
doubt my dog would have come back if in full blown chase mode

She sounds a bit 'unusual' and a little hasty to threaten the use of firearms. I would be walking miles away from her.

Arf at the woman and her 'pet' pheasant. Too funny.